Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Davidson County Republican Chair Lonnie Spivak in studio to discuss his efforts to mobilize Nashvillians and new blue state refugees in order to engage voters and get involved in their local politics.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by Aaron Snodderly, the executive director of Tennessee Independent Baptists for Religious Freedom. Aaron’s going to be giving us some details about an event he has going on. Aaron, welcome.
Snodderly: Good morning, sir. Thank you for having me.
Leahy: We are delighted to have you here in studio and of course, also in studio, my very good friend for a long time, Mr. Lonnie Spivak, recently elected chairman of the Davidson County Republican Party.
Leahy: You were elected, what, about two weeks ago?
Spivak: It’ll be two weeks on Saturday.
Leahy: Two weeks on Saturday. You have been out, and there’s been a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of organizational efforts. Tell us about that and tell us what your focus is organizationally as you build the infrastructure of the Davidson County Republican Party.
Spivak: I’ve got a great board. We had our first meeting on Tuesday of this week. We’re working on a lot of things, but obviously, as a new chairman, I have to create new committees, and I’m working on that. My focus is going to be registering voters, raising money, and getting members more engaged.
And as to that, I really am hoping to reach out to those people who are blue-state refugees who have moved to Nashville to get away from their blue states and wound up in a blue county without realizing it and want to get involved and not sure how to do it, then the Davidson County Republican Party is going to be the place for you.
You can reach out to me personally. Just email [email protected]. I’ll get back to you and we’ll figure out how to get you involved in Nashville politics.
Leahy: [email protected].
Spivak: I know it’s still weird when people call me Mr. Chairman. I’m just kind of like, yeah, okay, whatever. But it’s a thing. I’m the chairman of the Davison County Republican Party, and my email is [email protected]. We are working on a lot of things.
We’ve got our first Reagan Day Dinner in 10 years in the works. We’re working on doing a candidate forum for the mayoral election in Nashville. We have a lot of things that we’re working on. We’re hoping to really raise money so we can support candidates in Nashville. A big focus of ours is to engage with voters, get them involved and get them to the polls.
Leahy: And we will be delighted to work with you and broadcast any candidate for them. The details, of course, we’d have to work out on that. But The Tennessean, formerly the most important newspaper…
Spivak: In Knoxville?
Leahy: Yes, those guys. They’re doing a quote for them, and you can imagine what that’s going to be like. Left-leaning, biased, terrible, et cetera. So I think that’s a very good thing what you’re doing now. What’s interesting about this is, I’m smiling and the reason I’m smiling is that when I moved here, my family and I moved here in 1991.
I’m originally from upstate New York, and we lived in California for about 10 years. We moved here because I saw what was coming to California and I wanted to get out of there, but I didn’t know anything at all about Nashville or Tennessee politics. There was a radio program called Teddy Bart’s Roundtable. Do you remember that?
Spivak: I do. And in it would be Teddy Bart and a couple of co-hosts and three liberals, and a guy by the name of Crom Carmichael.
Spivak: The original all-star panelist.
Leahy: The original all-star panelist. And I didn’t know any of these people. And I would listen to them and I say, well, they’re crazy. And then I hear this voice of logic, and it was Crom. And I figured, you know, I don’t know anything. I don’t know anybody here.
I’m going to call this guy up and have lunch with him. I tracked down his number, called him up, and the rest, as they say, is history. I say that if you are new to Nashville and you want to get involved, you need to contact Lonnie Spivak. Give us that contact information again Lonnie.
Spivak: You can email me at [email protected]. I’ll get back to you. I’ll get you plugged in with the people in your region, and we’ll figure out the best way for you to work, get involved, and change Nashville in a positive direction.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Lonnie Spivak” by Lonnie Spivak. Background Photo “Davidson County Courthouse” by euthman. CC BY-SA 2.0.
